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The N� Yorker Intervi�
Paul Thomas Anderson
on What Makes a Movie
Great
The director of “Licorice Pizza” discusses his writing process,
choosing actors, and how you can tell when you are on a good
�lm set.
By David Remnick
December 12, 2021
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“It doesn’t require this kind of mythological, screaming, chaps-wearing, bullhorn thing,” Anderson
says, of what makes a �lm set work well. “It’s just about organization and communication. You can
have fun doing it and be kind and get it done.” Photograph by Helene Pambrun / Paris Match / Contour /
Getty
Slowly, cautiously, vaccinated to the nines, we are returning to some of the
basic pleasures of ordinary life. A few nights ago, my wife and I went to our
local movie theatre, a multiplex with huge screens and blaring sound systems. I
love all of it: the coming attractions for horror �icks I’ll never see and for spy
�lms I wouldn’t miss; the chattering crowd; the Brobdingnagian snacks; the
adhesive �oors. Our choice for the night was Paul Thomas Anderson’s
“Licorice Pizza,” a �lm set in the San Fernando Valley of the nineteen-
seventies. It’s about the strangeness of being young, the experience of becoming
a human being and shaping a self. The fractured narrative is wised-up and sly,
but also winningly sincere. It’s been a long pandemic, and this was an
exhilarating reminder of what joy is like.
Anderson is �fty-one, and he has been making movies since he was an
adolescent. He is a Valley kid, and he’s never really left those suburban streets.
His �rst features—“Hard Eight” and “Boogie Nights”—came out when he was
in his mid-twenties, and, ever since, he has been the sort of artist whose new
work is always an event. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom
Cruise, Melora Walters, Julianne Moore, and Joaquin Phoenix are among the
veteran actors who have appeared in his best �lms, which include “Punch-
Drunk Love,” “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master,” and
“Phantom Thread.
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Anderson rarely speaks to reporters. I was reminded of that when I got on a
Zoom call with him the day after seeing his movie. His square was not
indicated by his name but, rather, “Mason & Dixon,” a sign of his admiration
for the reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon. (Anderson made a �lm of
Pynchon’s novel “Inherent Vice.”) I spoke with Anderson for The New Yorker
Radio Hour; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. He was
speaking from his home in the Valley. And, since he has set “Boogie Nights,”
“Magnolia,” and, now, “Licorice Pizza” in that territory, I began the
conversation by asking him why the place resonates so deeply for him.
Ilove it. It’s as simple as that: it sort of begins and ends there. I can remember
being a kid and thinking at a certain point, probably in my teen-age years,
I’ve got to get out of here. “Out of here” being over the hill, not in the San
Fernando Valley. Maybe that’s L.A., maybe that’s New York, maybe that’s
London, maybe it’s Shanghai—whatever it is, I have to get out of here.
But I’m one of those people who loves to get away for twenty-four hours and
then I start getting itchy and thinking about home. I just want to come back
home. I’m one of those homebody-type people. I’m comfortable here. My
family’s here, my friends are here. It’s a place I keep returning to. Whatever
ambition you have to spread your wings, I always �nd myself returning here.
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After London, when we were making “Phantom Thread”—it was a dream of
mine to be able to work there—but when I got back home, I was just so
thrilled. The Valley is not the prettiest place in the world, it’s not the most
cultured place in the world, I understand that, but it’s home.
When I was a kid, I’d listen to late-night radio and watch late-night
television, and everybody from California would make jokes about the
Valley. I didn’t know what that was. What was the joke? What is the Valley in
a spiritual sense and in terms of the landscape of your youth?
It’s funny—I wonder if Johnny Carson might’ve contributed to that because he
would always say, “Beautiful downtown Burbank!” It may not be beautiful. And
there is no real downtown. . . .
I mean, the San Fernando Valley—what is it? It’s a �at space between the San
Gabriel Mountains and the Santa Monica Mountains. Its primary reason for
existing, at one time, was farmland. And, famously, there’s the story from
“Chinatown” of how water was diverted from the Valley.
It’s a suburb. And the suburbs seemed to always come in for a beating. I’m not
quite sure why. When I was �rst writing “Boogie Nights” when I was a teen-
ager, there was a terri�c story in my own back yard. I didn’t have to go far. I
didn’t have to make things up. I could do the research, learning more about
these people in this industry, but it was familiar to me. At some point, I
probably read that I should “Write what you know.” That’s a good place to
start. This work is hard enough. So why am I struggling to try to learn
something that’s beyond my grasp or that doesn’t speak to me?
“Licorice Pizza” centers on two characters. One is Gary Valentine, played by
Cooper Hoffman, a teen-age guy who is incredibly charismatic for his age.
He’s a small-time actor. He starts a water-bed business and then a pinball
palace. His patter, his bravado, is amazing for somebody �fteen years old. He
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falls for a girl, Alana Kane, played by Alana Haim. She’s much older than he
is. She’s in her mid-twenties, with a thwarted life but an inner intelligence
that’s also magnetic. How is that rooted in your experience? If you’re writing
what you know, what’s the germ of the story of “Licorice Pizza” for you?
I was the second of four [children], so I had an older sister and she had older
friends. She is a good two, three, four years older than me. And a buddy of
mine had an older sister. So, we just sort of happened to fall in the cracks so
that, when we were fourteen, �fteen, these were girls that were around us—our
sisters’ friends—were eighteen, nineteen. And they had cars! So, every waking
hour was devoted to trying to get them to drive us somewhere! And behind it
was trying to �irt with them or hang out with them or get noticed by them in
some way that was more than just being an irritating little brother.
I can remember having a couple of friendships with some of those girls who I
met along the way. They were just friendships, but they were fantastic. They
were fantastic just because they were just friendships, you know? To have a
friendship with a just slightly older woman, who wasn’t your sister—I had a toe
in a version of the adult world or what started to feel adult just because of the
transportation that they had.
Maybe the greatest assertion of power and age difference in the movie is not
the erotic one but the driving one. At one point, Alana is driving not a car
but a truck, and she’s driving it at one point backward at full speed down a
hill, down into the center of town. [Gary is her terri�ed and thrilled
passenger.] This is high drama. It’s better than Grace Kelly driving at top
speed along a mountain road in the South of France with Cary Grant.
That sequence that you’re referring to is a catchall for any number of episodes
that were either that dangerous or slightly less dangerous. And they happened
particularly in Southern California because it’s such a driving community. We
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are slaves to our cars. We love them. Especially at that age—your whole life was
dedicated to getting a car somehow. And the kind of trouble that you found
yourself in as a result was usually vast; you look back and think, I cannot believe
I made it out alive. So, that sequence taps into those episodes. At the time, you
just think it was just hilarious fun, but with a little bit of distance you realize it
was really life-or-death.
We see on the screen a title card. And it announces that this production is by
Ghoulardi Film Company [Anderson’s production company]. This name is
something with incredibly deep meaning for you and your family, and it’s
rooted at home, in the San Fernando Valley.
My father—his name is Ernie Anderson, and he was originally from Boston.
After the war, he came back and was a radio d.j. in Vermont, and he ended up
in Cleveland, Ohio. He was on the ground �oor of some television
programming that was happening there. He created and was the host of one of
those classic late-night horror shows. And his character’s name was Ghoulardi.
[The show ran on WJW on Friday nights, from 1963 to 1966, and was an
in�uence on everyone from Drew Carey to the Cramps.] He wore a fake Van
Dyke beard and sunglasses with one lens popped out. His job was to introduce
these horror �lms and show the kids a good time. Ghoulardi was an incredibly
popular character locally in Cleveland. [My father] eventually came to
Southern California, to the San Fernando Valley, and worked as a voice-over
announcer with ABC, he did lots of different commercials. He became the
booth announcer for “The Carol Burnett Show.” But Ghoulardi always kind of
followed him around for anybody who was in Cleveland at the time. The list is
surprisingly long—there were amazing people who were children in Ohio at the
time, from Chrissie Hynde to Jim Jarmusch.
One time I went back to Cleveland with [my dad]—I must’ve been about seven
or eight years old—and we got off the airplane and it wasn’t two steps into the
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airport before he was mobbed by people who recognized him. It was just this
incredible thing to see your dad, who was not famous in any way in my life that
I had here [in the Valley] with him, be this superstar of Cleveland television.
I’ve always thought of writing as something that you can do, or imagine
yourself doing, simply because you have a pencil and a piece of paper. It’s a
great deal harder than that, but you have the instruments to do it. You have
the self to do it. And nothing else is required other than, well, genius or
talent. To make movies, you can’t be St. Francis of Assisi. You have to be a
�eld general in some way. And yet you started making movies when you were
really young. You were twenty-six when “Hard Eight” came out, twenty-
seven for “Boogie Nights.” How did you know you could do it? How did you
put yourself forward?
My mother likes to say that I didn’t start directing when I was twenty-six or
twenty-seven—that I started directing when I was four or �ve years old. She
tells these stories about how I would get everybody together and organize these
shows.
I loved to make �lms as soon as I could. I was lucky enough to be wanting to
make �lms when it became much easier because the camcorder, the home-
movie camera, came around. Steven Spielberg was the shining star, but he was
working in Super 8, so you’re actually cutting the �lm, splicing it or cementing
it together. I had this device, this home-movie camera. It was huge and
cumbersome, but you could immediately see the results. You could immediately
put something together. You could learn rapidly. You could make a horrible
movie one day then not a bad one the next day and then another one and then
another one. You were able to keep practicing.
I was so young when I made my �rst �lm, but I was incredibly self-conscious
and prepared. I was prepared because I knew I was the youngest person on the
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set and I didn’t want to let everybody down. There were a lot of people around
me who’d been doing it for ten, �fteen, even twenty years. I really didn’t want to
be the reason why we slowed down. I’d already worked as a P.A. on so many
�lm sets, so I was aware of what made a good �lm set work and what didn’t. It
was always a matter of communication. I was the person who was there helping
to get coffee, knowing that no one knows what’s going on. Everybody is
bumping into one another. A �lm set can get like that. I could see examples of
why something was running smoothly; there’s a good line of communication.
You don’t have to be screaming. Yes, there’s a dictator, but it can be a
benevolent dictator. It doesn’t require this kind of mythological, screaming,
chaps-wearing, bullhorn thing. It’s just about organization and communication.
You can have fun doing it and be kind and get it done.
You read about Hitchcock, who had everything mapped out, storyboarded,
every shot prepared. Meticulous. The �lm is almost pre-edited. Then there’s
someone like Jean-Luc Godard, who’s improvising, writing the script for the
day that morning, and there is a kind of haphazard, or seemingly haphazard,
way of going about it. Your �lms always have a voice. I rush to see them
because I always know I’m hearing from you in the most personal way,
whether the �lm is set in London or in the San Fernando Valley—stories of
radically different kinds. How much of that comes out of the writing? Is the
writing the most crucial element of the creative process for you?
It all begins and ends with the writing. That’s an exaggeration, but the point of
that is to say that, if the writing is good, you’ve got a very good shot at making
a good �lm—or you’ve got a good shot of making your day. You’ve got some
clarity that you’re walking into the situation with. And the reason you know is
because when you write a scene that doesn’t work, you generally spend way too
much time trying to do it. You spend too much time reshooting it, rewriting it,
trying it a hundred different ways. And then you realize this thing doesn’t
belong in the �lm.
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I love writing. It’s the most important part for me. Because if it’s good and it’s
happening, I’m that much more comfortable on a set or that much more
comfortable waking up each day, going, Great, I’m looking forward to shooting
the scene.
And you know that going in?
Most of the time, you know. Sometimes you think, This is the greatest scene
that we have in this movie. And then something tells you, No, you don’t need
this. I mean, that’s the trick. It’s like, after this many years, you’d think you’d be
able to spot it quicker. Actually, this time I had some scenes that I wrote that
just were not working. And I would say to Alana and Cooper, “What if you
didn’t say any of this dumb dialogue that I wrote and you just walked and
silently looked at each other?” And it was great. We’d have this magical thing.
And it was a classic example of too much dialogue—enough with the writing!
Cooper Hoffman is the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Alana is
Alana Haim, who until now has been best known for HAIM, her band, with
her two sisters, Este and Danielle. There’s a certain audacity in picking those
two as lead actors for a major �lm. Until now, we knew Cooper Hoffman
mainly as a “son of” and Alana Haim as a musician. Why’d you choose them?
I swear if you were in my position, the question would be, How could you not
choose them? I happen to know them. I knew Alana certainly had the talent
and the competence from her years as a performer. I knew Cooper had the
heart and the soulfulness. It was unclear whether he could really—you can
never know if someone’s going to have that kind of talent in front of your eyes.
Or when you turn on a movie camera and they become, like, Pee-wee Herman
in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” when he’s staring into the camera or mouthing
the other person’s line. I mean, it’s always possible—believe me. But the more
that we read the script together and hung out together and really investigated
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this as a real possibility, it just seemed like a far less complicated choice than
you might imagine. It was looking for two authentic, genuine people who can’t
hide their emotions. And here they are right in front of me, and they want to
learn, and they want to try really hard, and they don’t want to let me down.
They don’t want to let themselves down. How could we not do this? This is just
gonna be, at its best, a wonderful experience for all of us.
So, they were the choices from the start? There were no auditions?
There was no audition for Alana’s part. That was what I had set my mind
on. . . .
You’d done music videos with her.
Yeah, many, many. I’ve worked with her and her sisters for a number of years
now. I contacted them because I liked the music and I offered my services. And
I have a collaboration that extends beyond the music videos. I love them as a
family. I love their music. And so, we’re very intertwined that way.
As a matter of fact, the experience that I’d had making the music videos really
informed the type of �lm that I wanted “Licorice Pizza” to be. We were always
running around the streets of the Valley. We had no money. We had no time.
We usually had about ten people on the crew, probably �ve sometimes. And
they were the happiest days I’ve had shooting—so immediate. And they’re such
great collaborators; I feed off their energy. And it was that energy that was
getting into the [“Licorice Pizza”] script.
There was a traditional casting process when it came to the Gary character, the
one that Cooper plays, probably because, well, it’s just how you do it. I guess I
was sort of playing by the numbers. Maybe there’s a kid out there and I can �nd
him. That went on for quite a long time, unsuccessfully. I mentioned Cooper’s
name to Alana, Danielle, Este, the three [Haim] sisters. They talk all the time,
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these sisters. They’re always talking all over one another. And when you say
something that lands, well, they all stopped talking and they kind of looked at
me and said, “Maybe that’s a good idea.” I got their attention. And so we began
that process, in a way, of auditioning Cooper.
How did they know him? What was he bringing to the party?
They know him because I know him. I’m as close to him as I can get while I
live in Los Angeles and he lives in New York. They had been introduced to him
�ve or six years ago. He came to town and I was looking after him and I had to
go off and take care of something. So, I said, “Babysit him. Hang out with him
for a minute.” And they did. And they were as taken by him as everybody is
that meets him, this incredibly personable, charming, empathetic, unique
person.
The last four movies prior to this, you worked with Daniel Day-Lewis, twice,
and Joaquin Phoenix, twice—two astonishing, experienced actors. They
know what they’re doing, to say the least. Your stars here are both superb, but
they’re relative rookies. How does that change the way you work with them?
Well, it’s different for sure. It’s different in some of the silliest, most basic ways.
Somebody that’s been doing it a long time knows how to pace themselves
physically, emotionally, in the course of sixty-�ve days. It would have been very
natural—and I could see that the amount of nerves and concentration and
energy that they were putting into this—that they could have burned out quite
easily.
I had to take them through each step of the process and give them enough time
to prepare. I said, “You have to learn this script inside and out, because there
won’t be any time to learn the script while we’re in the middle of it. It’ll be like
we’re skiing down a mountain at a hundred miles an hour.”
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You get to the basic things, like, especially with Cooper—he’s sixteen,
seventeen years old. Have you eaten breakfast? Have you had a snack? Are you
tired? You really do have to take care of them in that way.
Did you have to bring a juice box to the set?
Exactly! Here’s a juice box and some string cheese! But it was much more about
the pragmatic pieces of what it means to go to work each day over a period of
time. The emotional parts, the words and the characters that they were playing,
that was there. It was clear to them. One of the most beautiful things to watch
was the difference between day one and day three, the difference between [day]
three and day �ve.
You worked with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cooper’s father. I
hesitate to ask this question because it might be somehow off or vulgar, but
do they resemble each other in any way? Both as people and as artists, as
actors.
There’s a physical resemblance, sure. But what I think is nice is that Cooper is
really his own person. He’s got his mom’s eyes and his mom’s smile. And from
time to time he turns his head and he looks a lot like his dad. But working with
Phil was like working with Daniel or Joaquin. They had been doing it for so
long that they had �gured out the business of acting and movies.
His character is an incredible, lovable schemer. And you have that in other
�lms of yours—charismatic, morally complicated strivers like William H.
Macy or Tom Cruise in “Magnolia,” Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be
Blood” or “Phantom Thread.” What draws you to characters like that, these
schemer types?
It’s funny. It isn’t until you �nish writing the movie, making the movie, and
come out to promote it when it gets framed like that. And you go, I am?
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I don’t think I know. I’m not just being silly. I think it’s just a natural gravity
toward characters who, because of their nature, will supply good dramatic
situations, preferably comedic situations as well. What’s nice about Gary’s
ambition is that it’s the ambition of a teen-ager, which is very, very large but
only lasts about �fteen or twenty minutes. So, that’s ripe for good dramatic and
comedic possibilities.
I can’t imagine an Oscar ceremony this coming year without seeing Alana
Haim as a central �gure in it. Her performance is a knockout, and, again,
she’s doing it the �rst time out of the box. Yes, she’s a performer, a musician.
She’s been onstage a million times. But how does this happen?
I think the answer is that some people have a gift. Daniel Day-Lewis has a gift.
Joaquin Phoenix has a gift. Phil had a gift. Some people can make words
explode out of their mouths on a movie screen so that it appears that they have
just been formulated in their mind and their heart. And they can do it all while
they’re walking and talking, you know? It’s, like, weird. I’m drawn to people
who can do it well, because it’s a certain type of magic trick.
And then you say, Well, wait. Is it magic? Or is it just this full-blown gift that
some people can do it? I was very concerned because there’s a long history of
�lm directors who thought they were seeing some brilliant performance in front
of their eyes when, in fact, they were, like, blinded by some light or something
and missing some crucial component. I would constantly check in with the guys
that I was working with around the camera. I’m like, “Are you seeing what I’m
seeing? I knew she’d be good, but she’s just, like, she’s so unpredictable and she’s
so scary, but you can wrap your arms around her. She’s, like, all of these things
at once.”
You aren’t making Marvel �lms, you’re not making “The Fast and the
Furious” fr
anchise �lms; on the other hand, you aren’t making tiny-budget
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indie movies, either. You’re making �lms for adults on a midsize budget. Is
Hollywood treating you well? How are you looking at the landscape of the
business these days?
Boy, it warms my heart to be able to tell you that I feel happier than ever
working in this business. I’ve got my own little corner of the sandbox and am
working with people that I really admire, like at M-G-M. I’m incredibly happy
right now. But that’s me. There’s no end to the kind of sky-is-falling questions
that always surround �lms, and what’s going to happen.
Obviously it’s gotten even more complicated with streaming and the sort of
overabundance of superhero movies. Most of the stuff I don’t take too seriously.
I mean, it seems that there is a bit of a preoccupation with superhero �lms. I
like them. It seems to be something that’s popular these days to sort of wonder
if they’ve ruined movies and all this kind of stuff. I just don’t feel that way. I
mean, look, we’re all nervous about people getting back to the theatre, but you
know what’s going to get them back in movie theatres? “Spider-Man.” So let’s
be happy about that.
I saw movies of that kind when I was a kid and still do, but I wonder, if you
were a twenty-seven-year-old making your �rst �lms now, would you be in
better shape in this environment? The environment of Net�ix and streaming
and all the rest, or the environment you grew up in?
That’s a great question. And I’ve thought about it a little bit lately. There’s a lot
of money out there right now for people to make movies. When I started
making �lms, there was a lot of money out there for a window of time, and it
was home-video money. If you could make a movie for, let’s say, a million and a
half, two million dollars, keep it under three, and you had a couple of genre
elements, there was the home-video component to making a �lm that needed
to be fed. Which is essentially the same as streaming—call it home video,
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VHS, whatever you want to call it. It’s something that gets into your house and
gives you entertainment, right? So the playing �eld hasn’t changed that
drastically, you know? There’s some money out there.
Now it’s hard to �nd what you’re looking for. Because there’s so much stuff. I
am one of those people who spends an hour looking at the menu and then I’m
exhausted.
And you watch the Dodgers instead.
Right. I go watch the Dodgers. Like, I knew that there were three titles that
had been recommended to me, let’s say by a critic that I respect, and I’ll think, I
should really see that. But by the time I get around to it, I get so lost in the
menu, I’m frustrated and I say, Screw it. But it requires a viewer’s participation
to get up off the couch and go search these things out. I think the audience has
become quite lazy as well. They’re shovelling tons and tons of shit out at us all
the time, so you don’t know where to look. But, then again, audiences are now
getting lazy. They’re saying, “I don’t know when it’s important for me to get up
off the couch—you guys have made it impossible for me to �gure out.”
I know there are probably at least ten movies that I haven’t seen this year that I
want to see. The fall movies come around and I simply haven’t found the time
or I simply haven’t made as good an effort as I could have. I dedicated six hours
to Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” this weekend, and I was thankful for that. It’s
incredible. And I’ve still got two more, three more, hours to go.
Are you interested at all in making things for television?
I wouldn’t say no, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. I had this conversation
with Quentin [Tarantino]: I think neither one of us has a problem with writing
material. Sometimes the problem can be cutting material, you know?
Sometimes you’re in the middle of writing something and you have way more
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than you need and you go, Well, maybe this should be a TV show, you know?
That’s not the solution. The solution is not to just use a lot of B-material and
make a longer-form thing. The solution would be cut down, get to your good
material, tell your story properly and make a �lm. So, I’ve never thought about
it in a very serious way. I don’t watch a lot of it, so I don’t know exactly how it
works. The structure is something I’d have to learn, you know. I don’t mean to
sound like an idiot. Of course I’ve seen episodic television, but there’s a rhythm
to that writing and a structuring of how you pull a story over multiple episodes,
which at this point would be a huge learning curve. The people who do it, do it
incredibly well. I think I’d feel a little bit like a tourist trying to step into that.
I can’t help asking you, what is the last movie that you’ve seen that you
adored?
Oh, my God. You’re putting me on the spot. I’ve seen so many things. What
was the last movie? I just �nally saw “The French Dispatch,” which I really
liked.
I have one for you! I can’t believe this. I found a movie called “The Good
Fairy,” a Margaret Sullavan movie that Preston Sturges wrote. [A 1935
romantic comedy, directed by William Wyler.] As much as I love doing this
work and I love movies, I’d never even heard of it until a couple of weeks ago.
Those are great recommendations. I hope you’ll be glad to know that
Richard Brody’s top movies of the year just came out and your �lm and “The
French Dispatch” were the top two.
I just read Richard’s review of our �lm and I’m still sort of processing it all. I’ve
had good reviews in my day, but this one might take the cake for how, what the
�lm means to me and how he wrote about it. An old cold black heart like mine
kind of warmed up a little bit. It’s pretty great.
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I just �nished reading the dialogue between Alfred Hitchcock and François
Truffaut, a book-lengt
h interview, in which Truffaut was asking the
questions of Hitchcock. Is there a �lmmaker so central to you that you’d
want to have that dialogue?
Did you ever see the Kevin Brownlow documentary called “Hollywood”? It was
made in [1980] and is a multipart series on the silent era. And what’s amazing
about it is that, in 1980, most of those people were still alive. He �lmed
everyone from �lm directors to stuntmen and movie stars, reminiscing about
the beginning, the real beginning, like, 1917. I was reading [the
cinematographer] Billy Bitzer’s autobiography recently; he’s talking about
coming out from New York with D. W. Griffith and getting started. That kind
of stuff has really been getting me emotional. I knew a little bit about it, but
you realize that you could spend your whole life dedicated to it and still not
know much of anything. I think back to any of those silent-movie-era
�lmmakers, whether it’s D. W. Griffith or Raoul Walsh; even Howard Hawks
started in silent �lms. So talking with anybody who was on the cusp, between
the silents and sound, would be interesting. I’d love to hear those stories, have
those conversations.
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David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since
1992. He is the author of “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.
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